Read The Cutting Room: A Time Travel Thriller for Free Online

terminating in a T-intersection. I idled at the stop sign, glancing east and west. An embankment blocked my view of the river. To the east, a railroad bridge spanned the sky, a lattice of time-pocked green metal.
    Heart racing, I cruised east. The land was undeveloped and lightly wooded. Possibly a state park. The air through my AC was heavy with pollen. The trees thickened, canopies weaving together over the two-lane road. Desolate ahead and behind. He'd hear me coming. I parked on the shoulder, checked my pistol, and jogged into the tall grass fronting the river.
    I followed the rocky shoreline around a small bend. On the other side, a weathered brick outbuilding sat on pylons poking from the river. It looked at least as old as the bridge beyond it. Further down, a white sedan was parked behind a wall of trees, hidden from the road.
    I zoomed in on the sedan. Empty. I shifted to the outbuilding. The windows were intact, but covered from the inside with dark tarps.
    I got out my gun and held it close to my hip and slunk through the trees.
    Something clinked inside the shack. I switched off the safety of my pistol. He'd blocked the windows, but that meant he couldn't see out, either. I walked as quietly as I knew how to the door. Took a breath. Tried the handle. It didn't budge. I paused to listen. Furtive shuffling. A couple plinks of precise metal instruments set down on a hard surface. The low wash of the river along the broken rocks. And what might have been muffled sobbing.
    I got down on my hands and knees and crawled along the damp boards out to the abbreviated dock. I'd guessed right: a door on that end, too. Metal and rusted, paint flaking in psoriatic profusion. I grabbed the handle and pulled.
    Stephen was tied and gagged on top of an old metal table. The door hinges squealed. Prince whirled, pulling the boy to his chest and putting a long, thin knife against his neck.
    "Put it down," I said.
    "CR?" Prince caught something in my expression and smirked. "CR."
    "Put the knife down. How long have you been here?"
    "Long enough to fool you."
    "Six months? A year? For this?"
    He shrugged. "A year's not so long when you've waited all your life."
    "Now you get life in prison instead." I moved the tip of the gun. "Knife down. Last chance."
    "But I already did it, didn't I?" he said. "The first time. I killed him. If I hadn't, CR would never have known to send you back." He touched Stephen's cheek, spilling the boy's tears. "I had this child all to myself."
    "Can you remember it? No? Because now I'm here and it never happened."
    I stepped forward. He dug the knife into Stephen's neck. Stephen shrieked into his gag.
    "How well can you handle that old piece?" Prince laughed. "You might know which is the trigger, but can you hit anything?"
    "Find out."
    "Here's my counter. We both back away. Let the Pods do their thing and we go our own ways. That's the only guarantee the kid goes home safe."
    "So you can try again?"
    He bunched his lips in thought. "Maybe. Maybe not. You never know what the future holds."
    He was right about the gun. The old kinetics bucked like crazy. Especially this cased stuff. Twenty feet of uncertainty separated me from him. Easy enough shot when you're talking target practice. A lot less so when you're aiming an antique weapon at an armed man using a six-year-old to shield his body.
    But Prince was right. The kid had already died. If I missed, the outcome would be no different than if I'd never come here at all.
    I squeezed the trigger.
    I missed my mark, but not enough to miss Prince altogether. The bullet—case-fired, awkward, dumb—clipped into the side of his neck. He spun from the boy, blade yanked away by the impact, then stabbed at Stephen's neck. I was already walking forward across the grimy concrete ground. I shot him twice more in the chest. He tumbled back, legs reeling, and sprawled on the naked floor.
    His chest wheezed. I stood above him and shot him in the head.
    The bangs reverberated